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RTA officials blast recent criticism of bus service, streetcars

Updated on August 22, 2017 at 4:30 PMPosted on August 22, 2017 at 4:28 PM

Crewmen watch as a streetcar is towed behind a truck during a test of the new track on Rampart Street near the French Quarter on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Crewmen watch as a streetcar is towed behind a truck during a test of the new track on Rampart Street near the French Quarter on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Striking an uncharacteristically stern tone, officials with the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority sounded off Tuesday (Aug. 22) on public criticism leveled at the transit system's recent service moves and investments, including late-night bus routes to New Orleans East that many hospitality workers find cumbersome and streetcar expansions that critics contend have hurt access to jobs.

"I think there's a disconnect in understanding how the system works," said Justin T. Augustine III, the vice president of RTA's operations manager, Transdev. "You hear people get up in public, and they make statements as if they're fact. But we can prove fact out."

At a board of commissioners meeting held Tuesday morning, Augustine first laid into a report released earlier this month that concluded investments of $75 million to build the Loyola Avenue and Rampart Street-St Claude Avenue streetcar lines in recent years had not helped working New Orleanians reach their jobs faster or more reliably. Published by the transit advocacy group Ride New Orleans on Aug. 9, that report contends the Rampart streetcar rather increased work travel times for more than 1,000 residents living around the rail line.

Speaking Tuesday, Augustine bluntly disputed the report's findings. He argued that RTA kept bus routes along Rampart and St. Claude and removed eight stops on the route to speed up travel to Canal Street. On top of that, Augustine said, RTA added another mode of transit: the streetcar.

"There is no negative impact," Augustine said. "There's an enhanced impact of public transit services."

But Ride's executive director, Alex Posorske, on Tuesday pointed out that re-routing the Franklin Avenue bus onto Claiborne Avenue, plus the shuttering of bus stops, could have contributed to the lengthened work commute times. However, Posorske backed off on blaming the Rampart streetcar outright for longer travel.

"We never said the streetcar itself specifically caused that," Posorske said Tuesday. "We didn't have the resources, frankly, as a small organization to dig too much deeper than that."

Instead, Posorske emphasized that the report found both the Rampart and Loyola streetcars overall hadn't helped residents get to work, despite the $75 million price tag for both streetcar projects. He then agreed to meet later with commissioners to go over the report's methodology in greater detail.

Secondly, Augustine ripped into a group of hospitality workers who for months have called for more buses, routes, stops and late-night service frequency between downtown and New Orleans East. Members of that group - called the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee - have piggybacked on Ride's report to bolster their longstanding claim that RTA caters to tourists by focusing on streetcar investments, at the expense of residents dependent on bus transit.

Speaking Tuesday, Ashley Pintos, a member of the hospitality workers group, argued RTA's fleet boasts a disproportionate number of streetcars per rail route compared to buses. Consisting of 66 streetcars on five routes compared to just under 140 buses for 35 routes, RTA's fleet totals about 12 streetcars available per route versus about four buses per route, Pintos highlighted.

"RTA commonly denies our claim that New Orleans public transportation is created in favor of tourists instead of the workers," Pintos said Tuesday. "But these statistics are clear."

Augustine estimated that just 16 percent of riders on streetcar routes are tourists. He then asserted that around half of the total 66 streetcars are reserved exclusively for the St. Charles Avenue line, and are kept in storage for backup.

"So it's a flawed analysis when you try to say look at the number of streetcars per route compared to the number of buses per route," Augustine said. "And I'm saying that not to be disrespectful, but to give the public facts."

Further, Augustine said Transdev staff plan to submit a grant application this week for federal funds to purchase 44 new buses. Records show RTA has already solicited a bid for vendors to provide new "transit vehicles," a contract offer that Augustine clarified Tuesday would be contingent on RTA winning the federal grant.

He also said the system had invested another $79.5 million over recent years in buses, though he didn't specify what services those investments went toward.

"You've made more bus investments than you've made rail investments, from a financial outlay standpoint," Augustine said Tuesday.

Several RTA commissioners sought to soften tempers Tuesday. Commissioner Flozell Daniels urged Augustine and his staff to more clearly outline RTA's service and budgetary constraints, but also to keep the hospitality workers group's frustrations in perspective.

"I just want us to be careful as we sit in these comfortable chairs that we understand, even when people don't necessarily have the correct analysis or the technical facts, that folks are struggling," Daniels said Tuesday from behind the dais.

Other commissioners asked questions about how Transdev staff have conducted public outreach in recent months to communicate with the hospitality workers group. Adelee M. Le Grand, Transdev's chief strategy officer, bristled at suggestions that the line of communication between Transdev and the workers group could be any more open. She argued also that the full scope of riders' needs ought to be considered when mulling route tweaks.

"What we want for the process is to hear all types of voices," Le Grand said Tuesday. "Sometimes, because the squeaky or the louder voice is the one that has the might, and we're focused on addressing that one group's needs, we end up missing out on the needs of the vast majority."

Nonetheless, Commissioner Ashleigh Gardere advised Le Grand to follow through on an interactive online route-planning tool that the public could use to simulate route changes.

"I'm looking for the moment where we are delivering new tools to the conversation so everybody feels like they have access and are able to build something together," Gardere said Tuesday. "We've got to get to those new tools if we expect to see anything different."